Update... got it working with anything but a sun light in all variations. Is the Sun light somehow limited by comparison to the other lights?? It's not behaving like the other lights using the composite shadow action.
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Yes I used the search button.... So... only a quick reassuring question:

Is it correct to assume that when I have Compositing Background checked, that the only shadow I can get is the ray traced hard shadow. No way to catch the soft or the gi shadow. Right?! Or did I get lost at some point and I can get at least the soft shadow somehow....

Actually that information is incorrect, it will only accept light based shadows and AO, not GI shadows (which are more like real world effects, i.e. simply the lack of light). It should accept soft and area shadows, though there may be a limitation with the "sun" object.

__________________The Third Party | Homepage | My Reel"You need to know what you're doing before you start, and to start because you need what you're doing."

Thanks again for the info. Due to the fact that my problem is associated to a still, I simply added another light close to the geometry. Shadow works then.

I am NOT using GI or AO... Plain vanilla!

I was unable to find a setting which produces soft shadows from a sun object which is far away compared to a closer object. Ray traced shadows look ugly and the area shadows are looking the same as the ray traced ones only with a tiny fuzzyniess on the rim.

Might all be me, but I am able to get it done when the light is closer. I looked for angles regarding shadows and smoothing etc but could not tweak anything. No reaction.

But the good thing is..... sooner than later you can take a look at the problem yourself.

With all the cool stuff floating around I decided to dedicate a couple of days to the construction of a mega cool (at least I think so 8-))) ) Landscape Environment tutorial.

A cool plugin which I have not seen before fell into my hands which allows the import of landscapes a la VUE5 and then the integration of C4D contents. And due to the fact that everything is all spread around and half german half english I decided to make a neat little info/tut package out of it.

I'm done now as far as I could get (All good except for the shadow question) and tomorrow I cut it and pack it and upload it to my server. Tut movie, resource links, and sample scene which includes a nice Landscape shot into which one can drop any sort of cool stuff. Specially with the new Poser Plugin this will be incredible for many. Drop your castle into the hills! Instant LOTR feeling.

All I hope is that this is not an old feature and I wasted my effort.....

Cheers and thanks again
Rainer

PS: Here is something I made with that method (simple thrown some geometry garbage together in the ZB Junk thread):

Thanks for that hint, but when I use that setting to adjust the 'fuzziness', then fuzzy artifacts show up all ofer the rendered picture.... I'll post the scene later. The shadow looks pretty good but it seems that there is something majorly wrong going on. And all I have is a background with a frontal projections and a geometry with a frontal projection and a compositing tag.... Oh, yes, and one sun light.

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